Aw, guys (and girls), you're making me blush. Glad you like what I do.

Since the question came up in this thread: I actually did work at an investment bank (I was an FX options market-maker for nearly ten years, and a quant for two years before that). I packed it in a couple of years ago and moved to California to work at a software firm. (And I highly recommend doing the same if you want to get out of Singapore; California is fantastic. I'm writing this sitting by the pool in Palm Springs.)

Part of the reason I left the FX options business was so I could broaden my horizons and I've done a lot of that just reading and posting on here. It's a great place to learn about what investments are being sold (the legit ones and the dodgy ones); what people are interested in, finance-wise; and it's a place to hone my writing style as well.

And Klavier - investing for the long term is pretty easy. I run a little consulting biz on the side, giving hedging and investment advice to large investors and corporations who need independent advice, and usually I charge for this sort of advice, but for small investors the solution is dead easy:
* Put your money in a mix of low-cost stock and bond ETFs - for Singaporean investors, that's ES3 and A35, respectively; make the percentages equal to "110 minus your age" in stocks, and the rest in bonds;
* Once a year, at the same time every year, rebalance your money - buy and sell to bring your stocks and bonds back to that "110 minus your age" proportion;
* Go to the pub.

You can ignore all the trendy cr@p out there like commodities, structured deposits, contra trading, forex, robo-trade-bots, blah blah blah, all of it is worse than a simple stocks-bonds mix. Just do this and you'll be ahead of nearly everyone else in the markets.

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